News:

PD.com: Like a fraternity of drunken clowns, hopped up on goofballs, beating one-another to a bloody pulp with bricks; the maniacal laughter increases exponentially as someone runs off to get a cinder-block.

Not actually a meat product.Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCKAwful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart ContagionOctomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairmanwalking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and itís not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesnít matter." -- Max Tegmark

Firstly, it's worth stating that the volume of pigfuckers will, like everything, be higher than anticipated and probably extend to all the MP's and such that you would suspect it to and a few more for good measure. Blair, for example, will have done something similar.

Secondly, it's just piss poor. Saudi Kings buy solid gold cars. Ancient Emperors went full Caligula. We get these weak kneed fucks who bugger livestock. For fucks sake, even the Wehrmacht had a better go at decadence than this lot.

Thirdly, when they do try and throw some spectacle for the peasantry, you get wonders such as the millennium dome, Olympics, parties for the monarchy which are always: 1-from public funds, so fuck you 2-Filled with shite you hate, fuck you3-Universally acclaimed by the media outlets that benefit from them, fuck you this isn't for you. It's an expensive advert for the tourist trade.

Overall, I suspect the vote will mainly show how much of a racism problem the UK has at the moment. I'm moderately inclined to assume it will be rigged anyway as there is simply too much money at stake to bail out of it.

And also, possible Boris Government. I fucking warned you all for years and it was just funny. There's no way that twat could slip in. Well ha fucking ha, this is looking inevitable eventually now. It'll be like Blair with less words and more blithering.

Something of a sidenote, but I've seen full blown tent cities in 6 or so cities in the Northwest UK now. Homelessness seems to be a quickly increasing problem everywhere (anecdotal....) and I can't see this improving anytime soon. The Leave vote would almost certainly make it worse however.

Logged

Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

Discussing the EU last night with a good associate and he asks if I think things will go badly either way. Short version:

You know the prisoner's dilemma? Where you both always need to co-operate to do well? And as soon as 1 side defects that results in both sides getting screwed over? Then you've got a long series of tit-for-tat while you try and work together again? Think of the EU as a Prison wing. You're now playing Co-operate/defect with 30 odd other people too. And the UK is considering snitching to the guards about the hooch. Now regardless of whether they do or not, they're still going to get a kicking and not be allowed any hooch. Got to keep the rest of the inmates in line, see?

You know the other thing about prisons? The heating systems aren't great. And it'll be winter soon. So what do you think will happen with the prices in french owned power stations? Russia might want to sell us a blanket, but it passes through the block to get here and by that point it won't be so cheap. Or clean. Would you really be surprised if a vote in summer directly caused deaths in winter? I fucking wouldn't.

I'm not 100% on the countries as prisoners metaphor but there may be something there. Apparently no-one's really mentioned potential implications on fuel costs and I would assume this to be one of the first things that goes wild. The vast majority of UK power stations are owned by other countries. The inevitable seems fucking obvious.

Logged

Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

German politicians have been considering this, but in the event of a Leave vote occuring.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a variant of it even if we stayed, but I think it would be pretty indistinguishable from how things already are for us in Europe: we have no influence, no political capital and no allies, except a bunch of weird clerical fascists in Poland, because we act like little bitches and cry and stamp our feet whenever we don't get our way, and refuse any kind of compromise. Only now Juncker will actually probably tell Cameron to go fuck himself instead of pretending to give a shit.

Jesus fucking Christ. I may have mentioned this point about, oh, half a billion times, but Blair for all his fauilts had Europe locked down. He played the EU like a fiddle, by building issue-based coalitions and appearing to be open to compromise and discussion. By the time Blair left office, the UK was considered the third major force in the EU after Germany and France.

The deterioration of UK foreign policy under Cameron is something future historians are definitely going to make note of.

The UK is connected regardless of what happens, they will have to sign up to the Single European Energy market, as they will have to import as they have been daily to avoid a blackout scenario.

Now the weird thing with the ISEM is it is based on collective bargaining to get the best prices. There were already provisions for the UK because of the sterling, but there would be a need for more for the collective bargaining which is going to look like a very strange. It would basically be the confederated states of Europe + UK, unless they wanted to bargain on their own, which would almost certainly result in shortages or buying expensive energy from Europe.

EDIT: I realise most of this reads as gibberish, long story short is because Europes going to be setting energy prices, is physically connected to the UK grid, and because europe performs collective bargaining with the EU, the UK's going to get dragged along regardless of membership of the EU, or get shafted on energy costs for importing and exporting

I realise most of this reads as gibberish, long story short is because Europes going to be setting energy prices, is physically connected to the UK grid, and because europe performs collective bargaining with the EU, the UK's going to get dragged along regardless of membership of the EU, or get shafted on energy costs for importing and exporting

This.

There's also other imports/exports to consider. For example, the metals markets are what is technically known as "Fucked", mainly due to collusion between China and Turkey. Directly in the UK, huge job losses in the sector and I doubt it will ever really recover. Money is being thrown around in Cardiff to try and keep shit happening there but the North is FUBAR.

Likely outcomes?

1-Someone throws money at metal, and keeps going. Imports are still cheaper until a "Fuck you" tariff is imposed. This tariff will never be imposed as unlike the US, we are in no position to fuck with China. Did I mention China own a few things over here? Power stations, government buildings, nothing important.

1B-Someone throws money at it, finds there's no export market as they can all still get the cheap gear. That's being kind and assuming the EU doesn't slap on some kind of protective/punitive tariff on metal imported from the UK.

1C- Someone throws money at it and it's bread and honey all day long. Sounds legit.

2-No-one throws money at the problem, a bunch more people end up unemployed and you still import everything.

3-Government Nationalises part or all of it. Costs a shitload and then gets sold to cronies at the slightest sign up an upturn in the market. Performance is irrelevant as the facilities will be mothballed and only a skeleton staff kept on for show. Causes many issues as the next troubled industry/business will expect the same thing. Worth noting, no-one gave a shit about SSI/Redcar and others so any move like that is also a huge fuck you to those who were shafted earlier and harder. Also worth noting that for any "job loss" figures you can reasonably add 33-66% based on the size of the site and ancillary support services. There's a shitload of small business that tie into the big mills and they are frequently their sole client. Goes without saying, these chaps are pretty much fucked.

The other thing that this did was open up the fuckery with Pensions. This is probably one of the biggest upcoming scandals that has really to break yet. We've had various hints that funds are fucked, empty and worthless but I would put massive bets on the entire fucking industry to be fucked, empty and worthless. The horse trading around employee's pensions in TATA and BHS recently does give a fairly clear idea that there is literally nothing in the fucking pot. When this starts to break properly, I'd assume the EU will be used as the scapegoat whichever way the vote falls.

Logged

Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

The pensions thing is a global(first world) problem. People are living longer, and the recession took a load of young working age people out of the pool.So even without any dickery on behalf of the pension companies, we were already looking at big problems in the next 20 years for people retiring.

It would logically follow that the EU, being first world counties will have similar and widespread issues.

I strongly suspect that this isn't a problem in ~20 years, I'm seeing a serious fuckup within 5. The EU may be able to cope with it as an entity but I think it'll be too large for any single country to deal with on their own. Austerity #2 anyone?

Logged

Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

So much of what we do is entangled with European institutions and bodies which are either run directly through or with strong influence from the EU nowadays. It would be shorter to discuss those things which are not, by far.

Once again, these are the kind of things that, if we were being serious about discussing EU membership we should be discussing. But the Leave and Remain campaigns are fundamentally unserious in their whole approach to this thing.

It's a bit amusing to see Norwegian anti-EU politicians tell UK media that the "Norway option" is great and that life in the EEA is such a bed of roses, while at home the same people are arguing for Norway to leave or renegotiate the EEA agreement. If the UK wants to "regain sovereignty" and "control the borders", that option is shit. Norway does control agricultural and fishery policies, but in most other sectors we just have to accept EU regulations and directives with no means of influencing the decision-making process except for a few lobbyists in Brussels that nobody listens to. We have a "right of reservation", but it's mostly on paper and we've used it once (and then the next government overturned that decision). It's a tolerable enough agreement for a small country like Norway, but an aspiring (expiring?) world power voluntarily turning itself into a protectorate under the EU sounds just weird and degrading.

I'm a bit worried, though, that a Brexit will unleash all the ugly nationalisms of Europe and that there'll soon be no EU to speak of.

Like, just today. Seriously, that's how bad the media and political discourse on the EU is here. Everyone is like "tEh nOrWeGiAn oPtIoN1!2!" and it took people 4 months to go "well, actually, maybe we should ask some Norwegians what they think about their deal?"

I'm starting to feel quite nervous about the whole thing. The polls are way too close to call.